leftovers

University of Northern Iowa

LeftoversAuthor(s): Kathryn YoungSource: The North American Review, Vol. 260, No. 1 (Spring, 1975), pp. 48-52Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25117655 .

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Q

LEFTO?E 1 HANDLE

WITH CARE

lie is five." The lady pushes tortoise sunglasses down to the tip

of her nose, and, with a steady gaze now, replies: I'm

certainly happy to know all this. But are you absolutely sure you don't want to save it for later? I mean, what

has it been, six, seven months? No! I'll tell you what.

Let's save the rest until the ninth month and then you can tell me all the wonderfully hideous details and? don't you see??we can

pretend this is our very own,

darling son. Puft. Five years old.

She regrets. When angry she chooses words without

care and to her dismay they come tumbling forth in a

surge, wild. She'd like another chance. Tell me again, you

have a son. I must meet him, of course. Come for lunch

this Saturday. Patience. He has an animal, a pet, well the

dog must come too, then. Understanding. I look forward

to it. I accept, I accept.

Saturday morning. Anne Claiborne rose at the dis

graceful hour of seven a.m. It had been a bad night, full of wall shadows and hot, oppressive blankets. The first

thing she did upon arising was to throw open every win

dow in the bedroom and cleanse the restlessness away with the fog. She stood in the path of cool air and let the mist settle on her face, her nightgown. The child will be like his father, no doubt. Strong willed and sinewy armed and eyes that never fail to betray him. I can read those eyes; they are my security.

She moved from the window to the closet and began

a systematic journey through her entire wardrobe,

through the few leftover remnants of school to the collec

tion of dark, tailored skirts and fitted blouses. This luster less costume became her uniform, a source of comfort, a

modulated definition of some internal region she was

unable to verbalize or, perhaps, never cared to. But today.

Children like bright colors, they prefer disguises?don't they ??clumsy hats and lime greens and the kind of pinks that give one headaches and stripes as wide as the sky and sparkling circles and dots. They think distraction is

pretty. Will he think me quite an old woman in my clothes which were never meant to dazzle the abyss-like

eyes of a child? Will he see? I must test him.

She made coffee and carried her mug to the back

porch. The plants needed tending. She was grateful for

their need, the powdery soil, the dusty leaves, the clutter.

To spite her, he brought a gift one day, a small cactus so withered and prunelike that he had laughed at her ex

pression when she unwrapped the stunted, prickly growth.

"But it's nearly completely self sufficient," he had said. "You hardly have to water it. I think it looks

wonderfully inferior next to these other plants of yours.

Distinctly so."

KATHRYN YOUNG has returned to her home in Berkeley after an experimental exile in the Midwest^

48 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/SPRING 1975



In late October, when signs of winter leave feathery icings on the window sills, Anne moves her plants into the house. Some of them flourish in the artificial heating system?the ferns and the wandering ivys always seem to adapt?but every year she must make a valiant attempt at salvaging those that thrive on sunshine. Little blue vials of magic formula are especially concocted by her

horticulturist; she sets them up in a wooden beaker stand in the kitchen. On weekends she walks through her plant forest, or jungle as Richard refers to it, and gives each one a dose of the blue chemical. All except for the cactus, for, suprisingly, it kept up its own strength and grew

plumper and more fibrous every day. From across the neighbor's yard sounds of cello

practicing wafted through the screen door. The scales

began exactly at ten, as they always did; the lumbering progression of notes rose and fell, ascending and descend

ing in rhythmic pattern, swelling and diminishing until the cadence. The musician was a student, a girl so like

Anne in her college days?hollow cheeked, with a jagged shock of chestnut hair, hair that always conformed in a

wayward fashion to the forces of nature. She would watch the girl toting the absurd instrument, two angular figures headed toward some unknown destination with the same

look of expectancy, the same buoyant energy she had once possessed. She remembered her own passion : she had

wanted to become an opera singer, a famous diva travel

ling from city to city, feasting in posh restaurants and

reveling in critical acclaim. In college she would arrive at rehearsals slightly breathless, hair windblown, two

dark slashes of color across her cheeks, eyes bright with

anticipation. Her voice became her identity?the clear,

bell-like quality, the practiced control. After graduation she worked alone on the interminable exercises, the

breathing technique, the exaggerated vowel sounds, the French diction. But gradually it became more and more

difficult to come to the piano, to begin. She would put it off an hour, and then whole days, weeks, and finally altogether. Reams of printed sheet music lay in the

piano bench?she would not give them up?and they parched and yellowed. Now when the girl student passed by the window, scarves flying, book satchel swinging with the brisk rhythm of her gait, Anne would quickly look

up, as if to catch sight of the young girl somehow pre served the memory of a long-ago portrait of herself.

At the age of twenty-seven, with two rather bland affairs behind her and a succession of dreary jobs, she was now a script girl at the studio where she had first met Richard. He was an actor, divorced, ten years her

senior. He liked her strange ways, her bizarre devotion to every sort of vegetation, her gamin expression. She

found the age difference reassuring. And it was all very fine until he had uttered those words which she still didn't quite believe: / have a son. He is five.

A child. She was not on familiar ground. Children. She saw them at the supermarket, their graspy little hands

pulling and tugging at their distraught mothers, and in the park where their voices intermingled with overtones of shrieking and crying, savage in their insistence. He will be different. Round, solemn eyes and the blackest

hair, the color of huckleberry, and he will be terribly precocious and attentive. He will grow to depend

on me.

Richard rarely mentioned his ex-wife, and when he did it was always some

fragmented remark, an opaque

glimpse into his buried marriage. She gathered, from the bits and pieces she managed to construe, that her name

was Jennifer, that she spent the better part of the day at her potter's wheel endlessly spinning off crockery to show at her sales, that she read a great deal and cherished the work of Barthelme and most of the Victorian novel ists. She seemed thoroughly likeable. A lady potter spin ning off her wares for market. If Richard could only

mention something despicable about her, some tidy little tidbit she could magnify to gross extremes within her

mind. Just for reassurance.

They came before noon. A spindly legged child bounded up the front porch and rang the bell. His com

rade, a badger-faced canine ambled up the path at his own leisure, sniffing and pawing at the ground as he traversed the new territory. She opened the screen door.

"Why, hello there." The boy looked up. "Are you the plant lady?" He stood in the doorway and the flickering light from

the sun made dancing patterns in his hair, his fine, brown hair. His eyes are blue, they are blue and have that

startled, quality. And his arms are so frail.

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/SPRING 7975 49



"Daddy, is that the plant lady?" he insisted. "I'm Anne. What's your name and can you introduce

me to your friend here?" She pointed at the dog. "I'm Philip, and this is Simon." Richard placed a cardboard box at the foot of the

porch. It was filled with earthenware crockery of varying shapes and sizes, all carefully arranged in a neat pro

gression, large to small.

"They're from Jenny," he said. "She thought you

might be able to use them. For your plants." She was momentarily stunned. A gift from the lady

potter to the plant lady. "Tell her thank you." Thank you so very much, Jen

nifer. And will you give me another portion of your life

tomorrow, maybe the following day, or next week per

haps? There's no hurry, of course. You have such a great deal. And I will care for whatever you choose to relin

quish, please be assured.

The child and his dog foraged through the house with the eagerness of two novice explorers. They dis

covered all sorts of treasures, a cache of antique watering

cans, a string of homemade candles, a box of chocolate

raisins. He found the patio, overwhelmingly endowed

with foliage, a magnificent sight. He liked the ferns, for

they reminded him of the massive sails on a boat, but

he took particular interest in the cactus placed conspic

uously, like a wound, in the center of the lush, potted

garden. She watched him fingering and estimating the

degree of pain in each of the prickly needles until she

finally said, "Take it. Take it home with you."

At twelve, she covered the kitchen table with a cloth

and served lunch, an oyster gray chowder sprinkled with

tiny crackers shaped like fish. They talked about the western in which Richard was about to appear, the bad

guy with high spurred boots and a black hat. He wasn't

particularly happy, but he needed the money and when the part was offered it seemed wise to accept. The child

ate slowly; he chewed methodically and his eyes seemed to devour more than what he put into his mouth. He does

not even eat like his father. And later, as if prompted by some phantom cue, as though the time of her rehearsal

had terminated, she made a quiet suggestion; Perhaps we can all go to the park after lunch. But?

"No, we're going to the zoo," the boy merely said.

She looked at Richard from across the table. He does not even see. This child is wiser than the both of us, he has the knowledge, the clarified, blue-eyed insight spun from the wheel of the artist mother.

hen they left, she watched the car drive away from the kitchen window. They were in a hurry, they left in a rush?dog barking furiously, child racing to the car.

She walked to the porch and sat with her plants, their

quiet, murmuring voices, their rustling green leaves, the

comfort of their presence. He had forgotten the cactus.

He was thoughtless. Thoughtless. As children sometimes

are.

w

THE SOOTHSAYER

JLf she held the cigarette at a certain angle she could flick the ashes over the side of the ship, fashion her own

personal fireworks of orange sparks. And after all, it did

provide something to look at besides her sister's vapid

face, that gargoyle-looking smile stretched tightly from ear to ear. What a face of discomfort held together by those deceptive little muscles. You have trained them

well, I must admit, but that grin is just a bit too crisp around the edges, don't you think? Pumpkin-like. Too

easily broken. I won't tell though, Bernice, for I can be

trusted, whereas you cannot.

Emily had had an unfortunate childhood. She was not beaten nor unduly chastised like Bernice, who was

given to tossing saucy remarks and whose impertinence

grew to the art of a nimble-tongued serpent. No, her

childhood was simply, remarkably drab. They tried; oh, but didn't they? With that pensive flower of a face, that

compact, svelte body, you could be a dancer. You must

be a dancer. So mother drove her, drove her, drove her

to the ballet lessons. Bernice would stay home and play house with friends, spindly-legged girls with jellybean stained lips, and she would force them to drink unsweet

ened Kool-Aid against their will. While Emily went

through the routine of gangly arabesques and squat-like plies which she never felt entirely comfortable doing? they always seemed rather obscene?Bernice acquired the subtle techniques of survival on the terra cotta patio

of their own backyard.

On Sunday mornings, when the mother lay sprawled on the queen sized bed, a papaya facial mask globbed and receding into every middle-aged crease of her face,

Emily began her weekly ritual. On these mornings, the house would be hollow sounding; the objects in the rooms




seemed to give off their own energy, and each footstep made resounding taps as she made her way to the kitchen

door and out into the street. Ribbed kneesocks framed two jutting, angular knobs, a cast-off Givenchy scarf

made flaying movements in the wind, snapping around her head. She had an aversion to stepping on fallen

leaves, those orange-red hands segmented by brown veins, so with trepidation she carefully maneuvered her steps to a delicate, patterned walk. From afar it seemed whim

sical: A gaunt figure on an imaginary journey, to where? To the library. And to one

particular Horowitz record

ing. She would listen to an entire cut in order to hear the applause; she knew exactly when to turn up the

volume, the precise moment when the tumultuous clamor,

those surging waves of approval, came

roaring through the earphones. As many times as she heard the work,

she could never quite reconstruct the melody, the domi

nant theme; even walking home from the library, she could not recall. But the applause lingered and, some

times, at night, the deafening roar merged with her

solitude, penetrating the opacity of her room.

And so on. All the damp-cheeked yearnings of ado lescence rose within her. They dangled before her, each

longing a prism shimmering deceptively as it revolved in mid-air, its sharp edges glistening. She fled to the

sanctity of the illusory, for it ran like salve over those

daily betrayals. Her mother took her temperature, plunged her into steaming tubfuls of water, initiated a

multitude of therapies: extravagant shopping ventures

and high caloric lunches, comfort foods?whipped cream, ice cream, creamed chicken, cream

puffs. Be jubilant, mother insisted. Go out, she'd demand as Emily grew older, prodding her out the door with some fuzzy-tongued

boy plagued with a glorious technicolor case of rampant acne. On these occasions she would have to carefully

paint in every part of her daughter's face. Toffee rose

lipstick. Make the corners of your mouth turn upward, that's right, straight up to the clouds. Come on now and

give us some sparkle. Try harder, Emily. Try. Father stepped in when it became all too apparent

that Emily wasn't blossoming into the Sugarplum Fairy. (Mother watched limply from the wings and saw her

Margot Fonteyn dreams sinking slowly into the west? her Emily the eternal Rhinemaiden in extravagant Wag nerian efforts adapted to dance). Florid-cheeked, with a dense crop of sable hair, he brought home a stack of vari-sized college catalogues. She pored through their

contents, all of them padded with promises: We are it, we guarantee a valuable experience, to broaden, to stimu

late, to expand, for your money, for your money. What

prompted her finally to choose the small, eastern college was not so much the excellent faculty, the renowned con

glomerate of visiting lecturers, but the inside cover of the catalogue, a

five-by-ten print of a single tree in bloom.

A massing of polished leaves encircled by a thicket of shrubs. Her chaste sapling.

College sped through her consciousness; she was

there, and yet she was not. The ivy-covered buildings, the burgeoning, carefully manicured vegetation, that

smug-faced campanile, students moving somnolently to

class with frayed notebooks tucked under an arm; she watched it all loom and recede as though she were captive

in a kaleidoscope. To each season she adapted. When

winter left a quilt of white over the landscape, she would shield herself with an armor of heavy woollens, crocheted

stocking caps, boots that made crunching noises in the

snow. Sometimes an abrupt squall came

thrashing

through the town. Streetlamps blinked on and off, hesi

tantly, weakly, and often the storms induced a complete

blackout. Looking out her window into the sooty dark ness, she never felt more

protected. But on dreary days

when it was not really winter, had no precise definition, when the trees were halfway clothed in bedraggled leaves, an empty space, a void rose within her. Alone in her room she made every effort to fill that space, frantically composing sheet after sheet of poems, villanelles. Though the words were her own, she never failed to feel estranged from the stark, typewritten letters staring up at her.

In the cold air, in the warm sunshine of a fall afternoon :

they met before a pile of dead leaves. He was tall, and

slender, and self-assured. He imposed, he mocked, he

dared her out of the corner of his eye. She sat rather

bewildered, trying to conjure up pithy phrases, but they stuck like peanut butter to the roof of her mouth. Her hair hung in fat braids, and it was as though they were two paint-brushes, which, if she cared to, could merely sweep away the scene with one quick stroke each. But

she was too curious. And then what happened? she wanted to know. He said, I am a dark-eyed marvel from an exotic land, can you guess which one? She couldn't

really. I'll give you a hint, he taunted. Turbans, camels,

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/SPRING 1975 51



rugs. Ah yes, she nodded, pretending to know. It is that liver-shaped land between here and there, am I not correct? Later, when she knew for sure, she looked it

up in the tiny atlas at the back of her little green book, A Daily Reminder of Important Matters. A tiny country lodged between two big ones, two vast purple lands, one

yellow, one green. A sometimes arid, frequently blizzard

ridden, all the time mountainous point of beginning and

departure. To Emily, the names of his cities, those

mystical, multi-syllabled tongue twisters, seemed more

like the names of sorcerers, witches or warlocks. How

could it be? In the National Geographic, craggy-faced, emaciated men peered from the glossy pages. Rising

tempests of dust, soil the color of bisque. There must be some mistake. I see no trace of you in these honest faces.

She kicked off her sandals and began swishing her feet through the dried leaves, but so carefully, always the savior of lovely dead things. What's your sign? he asked. Here it is. It was such a bore, two scales of perfect

balance, and whatever are they weighing anyway? Is

this your system of judging, sir? He: You know, your hair is really much too lovely to be bound up like a

squaw's. Do you suppose you might unravel it one of

these days? And listen, I've always had this social afflic tion. Can't talk to anyone when they're on my left. She

mused awhile; well, I can't talk to anyone when they're on my right. (Premonition number one. He can't talk,

she can't talk, they can't talk.) In the beginning. The first weeks were filled with clever chatter, carefully meas

ured dialogue. Verbal warfare came with the change of

the seasons from autumn to winter. She was betrayed by her own sense of comfort. What is it with you, Emily, are you some sort of masochist? Do you dislike yourself so much? (Only when you ask.) Don't play games with

me. (Please understand, I don't want to be equal. I want

to be superior. ) I suppose you became involved to gather

material for your poems, am I not correct? (Unfair,

unfair.)

Let me begin again, please. It didn't turn out right? and doesn't a silly girl deserve a second chance? No. He

didn't have the decency even to stop eating when he

calmly informed her : Would you believe me if I told you I have no feeling for or against the situation? Meaning you, Emily. You are the situation and you are being blown like fine dust across the desert of his perfectly defined life. But you can't say that, she thought. You're

just too late this time. Rhett Butler already made that

crystal clear to foolish hearts all over the country. My dear, I simply dont give

a damn. We who have strug

gled against redundancies. And now this. Four days later, a Thursday afternoon. A counselor's

office, so full of arty wooded objects that it looked like it was straight out of a catalogue of Creative Playthings.

Deep amber curtains, a small table with a tissue box and

eyedrops, a picture of a young man, an arrogant curl

to his lip. What do you think of that? he asked. Tenta

tively now, let this be right?I don't like it. He seemed

pleased; I don't either. (Then why . . . ?) It seems to me ... in your relationships

. . . defined them before

they've even developed ... do you see . . . boat without

oars . . . one day at a time . . . to be . . . content; not

even happy, so hysterical, you know . . . Do you see?

You see. And as he walked her to the door: Just remem

ber, once we have made a decision, even if that decision is to make no decision at all, we have come one step fur

ther in taking control of our emotions. There is an exaltation in our survival.

It was, however, momentary, for the lady came down

hard and fast. Right into the arms of mother and father who promptly sent her packing on a therapeutic journey. Travel is so broadening, water is so comforting. All of

them, mother; your creases are becoming wonderfully

distinct, father; my, how hair flies! and Bernice, aren't

you looking smug today. I can't begin to tell you how

becoming it is. And everything was perfect. The passengers demanded

perfection. We have paid our $750; now look, please deceive us. The oily-planked deck was diligently scrubbed, the tropical drinks were served in towering glasses by slim-hipped Italian men. On deck, the people spoke in hushed tones, whispers, when if they chose to they could bellow and wail to their hearts' content. There was no

one to hear, only the miles of sea?and it had its own

defense; it could roar right back. After a week of wandering from one end of the ship

to the other, Emily staked out her own territory, as every

one else had. A reclining chair, a blanket, her private portion of the ocean.

"Anyone sitting here?" A girl, anywhere between that anonymous chasm of

time, 23, 26, 28; sunburned, hair pulled back in a pony tail. Emily shook her head.

" 'Cause if not, I plan to spend the day right here.

Hiding. My kids driving me up the wall, Clifford off to

play pool, and I've just about had it." She plopped herself down and plunged into an in

volved discourse on her suburban life in sunny San

Diego. Palm trees, massive shopping centers, the most

terrific highway system, fresh lobsters that haven't been frozen into a

goggle-eyed stupor. And then, she asked

her. Got any kids, honey? I can't possibly look old enough for that, can I?

Not yet. It's just that I'm tired and get that crepy look under the eyes and sometimes, even at my tender age, sometimes I actually have to use

concealing cream to

block out those purple shadows. Isn't it iricredible, though; I mean, I haven't even graduated fromv college.

For one fleeting moment, she wanted to withdraw the

picture of herself, a twenty-year-old baby picture, a gurg

ling, chubby-limbed testament to her past. But she didn't. She excused herself, climbed the stairs to the upper deck, and stood by the railing. Define your sense of freedom. Once we have made a decision, one

step. The conditions,

though: the stage must be properly set, perhaps tomor

row ; wait for an easterly wind, a frothy display of white

caps, a shrieking audience of seagulls. She looked down and thought she saw, for an instant, her face, rising

shining and dark from the water.




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